A Land Without Guns: How Japan Has Virtually Eliminated Shooting Deaths

July 31, 2012

In part by forbidding almost all forms of firearm ownership, Japan has as few as two gun-related homicides a year.

Waikiki’s Japanese-filled ranges are the sort of quirk you might find in any major tourist town, but they’re also an intersection of two societies with wildly different approaches to guns and their role in society. Friday’s horrific shooting at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater has been a reminder that America’s gun control laws are the loosest in the developed world and its rate of gun-related homicide is the highest. Of the world’s 23 “rich” countries, the U.S. gun-related murder rate is almost 20 times that of the other 22. With almost one privately owned firearm per person, America’s ownership rate is the highest in the world; tribal-conflict-torn Yemen is ranked second, with a rate about half of America’s.

Excerpt from an article written by Max Fisher, The Atlantic. Continue HERE